Anna's Inquiring Alphabet

> I think my job is to observe people and the world and not to judge them.  I always hope to position myself away from so-called conclusions.  I would like to leave everything wide open to all the possibilities in the world. Haruki Murakami According to that inestimable source, the

The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place. George Bernard Shaw Almost every instance in daily life throws up the treacherous threads of communication. Words, it would seem, be they spoken or written offer possibilities from the comic down to the simply frustrating and

I dream of giving birth to a child who will ask, ‘Mother, what was war?’ Eve Merriam This Sunday, as we all know, marks the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I, arguably the cruellest and most destructive war mankind has ever embarked upon. Frankly, at no point

Courage is being scared to death… and saddling up anyway. John Wayne Somewhere in my head is a possibly apocryphal story of a candidate sitting for a final philosophy examination.   The question was, ‘What is courage?’ For a long moment, the student looked at the question, then wrote on the

> Humour is the great thing, the saving thing.  The minute it crops up, all our irritation and resentments slip away, and a sunny spirit takes their place. Mark Twain Is it possible the most insulting remark you can make to another human being, leaving aside comments on appearance, ancestry

The most precious gift we can offer anyone is our attention Thich Nhat Hanh Recently I read a scholarly and readable book that made me think a lot about ‘attention.’Stand Out of Our Light is the work of former Google strategist  turned Oxford philosopher, James Williams.  One hundred and